The future of e-commerce for growing businesses

Whether you work for a retail, distribution or manufacturing organization, selling more product at the highest profit margin is a constant goal. Companies understand that the rise in e-commerce technology presents an opportunity to sell more on a global scale and deliver products faster and easier to more customers. Smart businesses are keeping up with the interplay between experiential and transactional to remain competitive.

The growth in e-commerce

Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses have inherent limitations based on geography and reach. Those businesses, no matter how much they spend, can’t get large and rapid growth outside their local area. E-commerce changes all of that. More and more brick-and-mortar businesses are expanding their reach and growth thanks to properly executed e-commerce technology and analytics.

Sales from e-commerce, including mobile e-commerce, are expected to continue to grow significantly, with Gen-Xers and millennials being the demographic to make these purchases.

As technology continues to advance, consumer expectations will continue to evolve, especially for speed and convenience and it is predicted that e-commerce will become the traditional business model.

Intelligence to optimize your website

Keeping up with ever-improving e-commerce technology will be key to keeping and acquiring customers. Consumers and businesses are doing more online research prior to making purchasing decisions. They are weighing up their options based on things like relevancy, convenience and speed of delivery. How does your website measure up? Does it accurately show your core products and how they can add value? Does it allow people browsing to place an order immediately while your products are top of mind?

The average website page view is less than a minute. If your website is not smart enough or does not clearly display your products or services in a user-friendly, benefit-oriented way, a lot of potential business is lost.

To increase both traffic and sales through your website, many businesses are turning to analytics solutions companies to gather intelligence, optimize the online shopping experience and direct buyers to the right products based on previous online behavior. For example, data analytics solutions company, Phocas, is incorporating artificial intelligence to help suggest complimentary products, maximize cross-sell and upsell opportunities and organize websites in a way that will generate more sales.

Tracking e-commerce performance

Another important analytic function is the ability to track e-commerce performance and analyze e-commerce sales. Who is buying which products? What patterns can be identified to help you better understand your customers and their online behavior? How fast are goods being shipped? How is inventory holding up?

Understanding and tracking the e-commerce component of your business is key to its ongoing success. Expert data analytics is one of the best ways to make sure your e-commerce business continues to grow.